Origins of the British Empire
Great Britain made its first tentative efforts to establish overseas settlements in the 16th century. Maritime expansion, driven by commercial ambitions and by competition with
France
, accelerated in the 17th century and resulted in the establishment of settlements in
North America
and the
West Indies
. By 1670 there were British
American colonies
in
New England
, Virginia, and Maryland and settlements in the Bermudas,
Honduras
, Antigua,
Barbados
, and
Nova Scotia
.
Jamaica
was obtained by conquest in 1655, and the
Hudson’s Bay Company
established itself in what became northwestern
Canada
from the 1670s on. The
East India Company
began establishing trading posts in
India
in 1600, and the
Straits Settlements
(Penang,
Singapore
,
Malacca
, and Labuan) became British through an
extension
of that company’s activities. The first permanent British settlement on the
African
continent was made at James Island in the
Gambia River
in 1661. Slave trading had begun earlier in
Sierra Leone
, but that region did not become a British possession until 1787.
Britain
acquired the
Cape of Good Hope
(now in South Africa) in 1806, and the South African interior was opened up by
Boer
and British pioneers under British control.
Nearly all these early settlements arose from the enterprise of particular companies and magnates rather than from any effort on the part of the English crown. The crown exercised some rights of appointment and supervision, but the colonies were essentially self-managing enterprises. The formation of the empire was thus an unorganized process based on
piecemeal
acquisition, sometimes with the British government being the least willing partner in the enterprise.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the crown exercised control over its colonies chiefly in the areas of trade and shipping. In accordance with the mercantilist philosophy of the time, the colonies were regarded as a source of necessary raw materials for
England
and were granted monopolies for their products, such as tobacco and sugar, in the British market. In return, they were expected to conduct all their trade by means of English ships and to serve as markets for British manufactured goods. The
Navigation Act
of 1651 and
subsequent
acts set up a closed economy between Britain and its colonies; all colonial exports had to be shipped on English ships to the British market, and all colonial imports had to come by way of England. This arrangement lasted until the combined effects of the Scottish economist
Adam Smith
’s
Wealth of Nations
(1776), the loss of the American colonies, and the growth of a free-trade movement in Britain slowly brought it to an end in the first half of the 19th century.
The
slave trade
acquired a peculiar importance to Britain’s colonial economy in the Americas, and it became an economic necessity for the Caribbean colonies and for the southern parts of the future
United States
. Movements for the end of
slavery
came to fruition in British colonial possessions long before the similar movement in the United States; the trade was abolished in 1807 and slavery itself in Britain’s dominions in 1833.
Competition with France
British military and naval power, under the leadership of such men as
Robert Clive
,
James Wolfe
, and
Eyre Coote
, gained for Britain two of the most important parts of its empire?Canada and India. Fighting between the British and French colonies in North America was
endemic
in the first half of the 18th century, but the
Treaty of Paris
of 1763, which ended the
Seven Years’ War
(known as the
French and Indian War
in North America), left Britain dominant in Canada. In India, the East India Company was confronted by the French
Compagnie des Indes
, but
Robert Clive
’s military victories against the French and the rulers of
Bengal
in the 1750s provided the British with a massive accession of territory and ensured their future supremacy in India.
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The loss of Britain’s 13 American colonies in 1776?83 was compensated by new settlements in
Australia
from 1788 and by the spectacular growth of
Upper Canada
(now
Ontario
) after the emigration of loyalists from what had become the United States. The
Napoleonic Wars
provided further additions to the empire; the
Treaty of Amiens
(1802) made Trinidad and Ceylon (now
Sri Lanka
) officially British, and in the Treaty of Paris (1814) France
ceded
Tobago,
Mauritius
,
Saint Lucia
, and
Malta
. Malacca joined the empire in 1795, and Sir
Stamford Raffles
acquired Singapore in 1819. Canadian settlements in Alberta, Manitoba, and
British Columbia
extended British influence to the Pacific, while further British conquests in India brought in the
United Provinces
of Agra and Oudh and the Central Provinces, East Bengal, and Assam.